1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to real time targeted advertising using purchase transaction data, payment card holder activity, and location information in a retail environment. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and a system to enable a merchant to make a targeted offer to payment card holders on a real time basis in a retail environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
The vast majority of advertising content is delivered to consumers at a time when consumers are not actively making a purchasing decision or not in a retail environment. For example, advertising content in the form of consumer promotions, such as coupons, are delivered in physical form via mail or in free standing inserts in newspapers or other forms of published media. To be effective, these consumer promotions must not only be viewed by consumers—a daunting problem, given the size of newspapers, magazines and other print media—but must also generate a sufficient impression on consumers to cause consumers to change their purchasing behavior when later shopping at a retail store. Given the hurdles for consumer promotions to be successful, it is therefore not surprising that the vast majority of coupons are never actually redeemed and that return on advertising dollar spent can be quite small.
As another example, the presentation of advertising on television has long been one of the most important channels for advertisers to reach consumers with advertising content. While advertisers may be more confident that consumers are actually being exposed to advertising content that is presented on television, consumers receive the content at a time when they are engaged in the passive activity of watching television programming. As with print ads, the advertiser must therefore count on the advertising content making a sufficiently large enough impression on consumers to cause consumers to later change their purchasing behavior at a point of purchase.
With the creation of the World Wide Web and the launch of commercial websites through which products and services could be purchased, some of the challenges of reaching consumers at a time when consumers are making a purchase decision changed. By advertising on websites, advertisers were suddenly able to target consumers based on the website that they are visiting, the products or services that they are looking at and considering purchasing, and other characteristics of the consumer, such as past purchases or express indications of preference. By moving advertising online and closer to a consumer's point of purchase, advertisers are able to have a greater impact on the purchasing behavior of consumers. A shortcoming of advertising on websites, however, is that only a fraction of total purchase transactions are performed on the web. Most purchases are still completed in brick-and-mortar stores.
Although websites have allowed advertisers to move closer to the point of purchase, the vast majority of advertising is still being delivered to consumers via print or television media at a time and location distant from the point of purchase. To date, no solution has been able to combine the effectiveness of online advertising to the inherent volume advantage provided by traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.